RonPurewal Wrote:wow, that's a bear of a problem. geez louise.
you are misreading the parallelism. you are correct that 'banked with dirt...' has to be parallel to something. unfortunately, though, the 'something' in question happens to be 'overlaid with slabs...'.
in other words, 'banked with dirt' applies to the framework of poles, not to the house itself.
a final problem with choice d is that the phrase 'as high as' should be followed by one value, not a range.
some of our players weigh as much as 300-325 pounds --> bad phrasing
some of our players weigh as much as 325 pounds --> good phrasing
Hi Ron, in same question in another thread you mentioned that banked with dirt is parallel to conical in shape, while here you mentioned that it is parallel to overlaid with slabs, which one is corret and why?
Here is your reference quote:
the part starting with "its framework of poles..." is an appositive modifier (a descriptor), and is NOT parallel to "conical in shape". therefore, i'll yellow that part out, so it's easier to see the resultant parallelism in (a):
The singe-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern California, was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.
once those words are yellowed out, it should be easier to see that "conical in shape" is parallel to "banked with dirt...".
note that the appositive modifier CANNOT be parallel to the other elements of the sentence, because it's grammatically unlike those elements. this is how we know that we can eliminate it from the 'skeleton' of the sentence.